The Authoritative Life of General William Booth eBook

Truly, our future chroniclers will
have to record the fact that our Social Operations
added a celestial lustre and imparted a Divine dignity
to the struggles of the early years of The Salvation
Army’s history.

To our own eyes in The Army, however, that which has
been done in connexion with the Institutions is only
a very insignificant part of the whole effect produced.
Until the present movement all over the world in favour
of the betterment of the social condition of the masses
of the people has had time to accomplish definite
results, our Institutions may yet have a good work
to do.

But the great work The General did in this connexion
was the restoration to men’s minds of the Saviour’s
own view, that we owed to every man every care that
a truly brotherly heart must needs bestow. That
principle, as The General pointed out, had always been
acted upon, as best it could be, from the beginning,
and is daily acted upon to-day, wherever The Army
exists.

Chapter XXI

Motoring Triumphs

During one of his Motor Tours The General remarked:—­

“It was here (Banbury) that the
idea of a Motor Campaign was conceived.
Seven or eight years ago (1900) I held an afternoon
Meeting in this place. On that occasion a
crowd of my own people and friends came to the
station to give me a send-off. Such was the affection
shown, and so manifest was the pleasure derived from
my visit, that I said to myself:—­

“’Why should
I not impart this satisfaction to those comrades and
friends throughout the
country who have never had the satisfaction
of seeing my face, or
hearing my voice?’

“And then the idea occurred to
my mind that the automobile would not only be
the readiest means of transit, but the only plan by
which I could reach the small towns and outlying
hamlets. Moreover, it would perhaps prove
the only method by which we could get through
the crowds who would be likely to assemble on such
a Campaign.”

By most men, in their prime, it would be thought an
ample filling up of any week to address three large
Meetings on the Sunday, and one each week night; but
The General, at seventy-four, saw that, travelling
by motor, and visiting in the daytime such smaller
towns and villages as had never seen him before, or
not for many years, he could not only reckon upon
three large indoor Meetings every day, but speak, perhaps,
to millions of people he had never before addressed.
And so in six Motor Tours he passed from end to end
and from side to side of Great Britain, gathering
crowds from day to day for six weeks at a time.

We have met with people frivolous enough to write
of all that as if The General’s Motor Tours
were luxuries! In one glorious sense they were
really so, for, to him, there could never be a greater
luxury than to proclaim the Gospel to a crowd.
But, as a matter of fact, he found it less expensive
to travel in this way than to go as he ordinarily did
for a long journey to and from London by train to
reach each town separately.